Speaker 1: Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2: On December eighth, two thousand, a bishop ordained a new
Speaker 2: minister in his church. The procedure for this sort of
Speaker 2: thing varies depending on the denomination, but in this case,
Speaker 2: the ceremony didn't take place in a church. There was
Speaker 2: no ceremony, and there wasn't really much of a church
Speaker 2: to speak of. There is not even any evidence that
Speaker 2: these two men ever met.
Speaker 1: Face to face.
Speaker 2: The ordination took place through the mail, and by the
Speaker 2: time William Fink was holding the envelope containing his certificate
Speaker 2: of ordination, it had already been opened. Federal prisons opened
Speaker 2: most of the male sent to the people they house.
Speaker 2: A few years into his fourteen year sentence for beating
Speaker 2: a man to death while working as a corrections officer
Speaker 2: in New Jersey, Fink felt divinely called to reinterpret the Bible.
Speaker 2: He even learned ancient Greek to create his own translations
Speaker 2: of Biblical texts, all in service of proving that Jewish
Speaker 2: people were the descendants of Satan. And this certificate made
Speaker 2: it official he was a Christian identity minister. Today, William
Speaker 2: Fink is one of the leading purveyors of Christian identity propaganda.
Speaker 2: The man who ordained him. Frank Smith is dead. I'm
Speaker 2: Molly Conger and this is where little guys. This is
Speaker 2: the story of Frank Smith's final evolution. He was a
Speaker 2: bank robber, a bomber, a hit man, a loan shark,
Speaker 2: a Nazi, and for the latter half of his life
Speaker 2: a minister. As a young man in the early nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: he worked as a boxing promoter, but he kept getting
Speaker 2: arrested for bank robbery. If you believe a prosecutor in
Speaker 2: New York, he was also available as a murderer for hire.
Speaker 2: He had a reputation for being the guide to call
Speaker 2: when members of New England Organized crime needed something bombed.
Speaker 2: While he was in prison for blowing up a man's house,
Speaker 2: he read a few issues of the Rockwell Report, a
Speaker 2: newsletter written by American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell.
Speaker 2: He was so intrigued by Rockwell's message that he drove
Speaker 2: down to Virginia to meet the man. Just weeks after
Speaker 2: being released from prison in nineteen sixty five, Frank Smith
Speaker 2: had a proposition for the Nazi Party. He owned six
Speaker 2: hundred acres of land up in Maine that the Nazis
Speaker 2: could use to start a fake church. It would provide
Speaker 2: the party with some institutional legitimacy, and it would make
Speaker 2: it easier for the group to accept donations. After meeting
Speaker 2: with Rockwell, Frank reported back to a man in charge
Speaker 2: of a different organization, Raymond patriarcha head of the New
Speaker 2: England Mafia. He hoped that the two groups could have
Speaker 2: a mutually beneficial relationship, but it wasn't meant to be.
Speaker 2: Frank ran a foul of the mafia by ordering hits
Speaker 2: without permission from the boss, and he found himself on
Speaker 2: the wrong end of a gun one night in March
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty five. After barely surviving the attempted hit,
Speaker 2: Frank went back down to Virginia to help out with
Speaker 2: Rockwell's campaign for governor. It was there that he met
Speaker 2: his wife, Claudia, one of the Nazi Party secretaries.
Speaker 1: For two years.
Speaker 2: Frank was an active member of the American Nazi Party
Speaker 2: and apparently a close friend of both George Lincoln Rockwell
Speaker 2: and Rockwell's mistress, Barbara von Getz. Rockwell even gave Frank
Speaker 2: a fun nickname, the Holy Father. He had, after all,
Speaker 2: approached Rockwell with the great idea of forming a whites
Speaker 2: only church. But Frank wasn't actually all that religious. He was, however,
Speaker 2: full of bullet holes from that botched mob hit. When
Speaker 2: they first met in early nineteen sixty five, the timing
Speaker 2: seemed perfect. Rockwell had been considering the possibility of hiding
Speaker 2: his Nazi rhetoric behind some kind of faux Christian front
Speaker 2: for years, and now here's Frank offering him the resources
Speaker 2: to bring that idea to life. Rockwell himself had no
Speaker 2: attachment to Christianity or religion of any kind, but he
Speaker 2: saw the political value in pretending his message was a
Speaker 2: Christian one, and he was in close contact with the
Speaker 2: burgeoning Christian identity movement. I think it bears repeating every
Speaker 2: time this comes up, which is not infrequently, But Christian
Speaker 2: identity means something specific, and it isn't Christianity. To say
Speaker 2: someone is an adherent of Christian identity isn't just another
Speaker 2: way of saying they are someone who identifies as a Christian.
Speaker 2: This isn't someone who is Methodist or Presbyterian or Catholic
Speaker 2: or anything like that. It isn't a Christian denomination and
Speaker 2: there's no real doctrinal unity among its adherents at its core, though,
Speaker 2: the one thing all Christian Identity adherents share is a
Speaker 2: commitment to a deeply racist, anti Semitic belief system centered
Speaker 2: around the idea that white Europeans are God's true chosen people.
Speaker 2: Rockwell knew that in the nineteen sixties. He was in
Speaker 2: contact with men like Wesley Swift, the father of the
Speaker 2: Christian Identity movement, and Richard Butler, the man who would
Speaker 2: later turned Swift's church into the Arian Nations.
Speaker 1: But Frank didn't.
Speaker 2: Frank was just a career criminal, an opportunist looking for
Speaker 2: a new way to get ahead, an organized crime. He
Speaker 2: didn't know a damn thing about anything besides collecting payments
Speaker 2: from guys who made bad bets on boxing matches.
Speaker 3: I'm dal stas a bunch of kids from the coach
Speaker 3: and they're telling me I'm of Israel. What is this
Speaker 3: I know about? I know all about the childs and
Speaker 3: the history. Right yeah, I'm telling here, I says, And
Speaker 3: that's telling me. I'm a chill. That's telling me I'm Israel.
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about ten trigsonless.
Speaker 2: When members of the American Nazi Party first explained Christian
Speaker 2: identity to Frank on his first visit down to the
Speaker 2: barracks in nineteen sixty five, he was offended. They said
Speaker 2: he was a descendant of the true Israelites, and he
Speaker 2: didn't know what that meant, so he thought they were
Speaker 2: accusing him of being Jewish.
Speaker 3: And we never discussed that either. I never knew of
Speaker 3: any particular faith. He had never asked them, stayed away
Speaker 3: from it. It was political. We tested that way. Political and racial.
Speaker 3: Absolutely racial.
Speaker 2: That's Frank describing the original plan he and Rockwell had
Speaker 2: for their partnership. He's remarkably candid in this interview. He
Speaker 2: has no problem admitting what was on his mind when
Speaker 2: he started down the path of forming his church. He's
Speaker 2: talking about nineteen sixty five, but that interview was recorded
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen. You can probably tell, even just from
Speaker 2: the handful of clips I've used throughout this series, he's rambling.
Speaker 2: He sort of fades in and out, and he mumbles,
Speaker 2: and he doesn't finish all of his thoughts, and some
Speaker 2: of his thoughts seem to start in the middle, or
Speaker 2: he's reminiscing about things that don't quite make sense. He
Speaker 2: was ninety five years old in twenty sixteen, So even
Speaker 2: though I listened to the entire interview a few times.
Speaker 2: There's a lot missing there. So he's speaking very openly
Speaker 2: about how he knew this church idea was a scam
Speaker 2: when he first thought of it in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2: But there's no explanation offered of how or when or
Speaker 2: why he changed his mind, because I think he did.
Speaker 2: He did end up forming a church, and it seems
Speaker 2: like maybe eventually he really believed he was a minister.
Speaker 2: He didn't end up forming the church that he and
Speaker 2: Rockwell had talked about. Rockwell was murdered in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: so that plan was out the window. When Rockwall's murderer,
Speaker 2: John Patler went on trial, Frank testified for the defense.
Speaker 2: A few months after the trial, American Nazi Party member
Speaker 2: Christopher Vivdnyevitch showed up outside Frank's house in Maine. The
Speaker 2: pair had a shootout, but no one was injured and
Speaker 2: no one went to jail. This apparent attempt to kill
Speaker 2: him ended Frank's interest in continued involvement with the American
Speaker 2: Nazi Party, but not with its core beliefs, and the
Speaker 2: idea of forming that church must have still been rattling
Speaker 2: round in his mind too. He lived quietly for a
Speaker 2: few years. As far as I can tell, he pops
Speaker 2: up in some old issues of his local newspaper, the
Speaker 2: Ellsworth American, from time to time. In February of nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine, he was offering boxing lessons to local high
Speaker 2: school boys at a theater after school. A few months later,
Speaker 2: he called the fire department after losing control of a
Speaker 2: fire he'd set on his property.
Speaker 1: He says he.
Speaker 2: Set the fire to burn the grass on his property.
Speaker 2: I'm not entirely sure what he means by that, but
Speaker 2: it was treated as a perfectly reasonable explanation by the newspaper.
Speaker 2: After the fire was extinguished, firefighters walked the property just
Speaker 2: a double check that there were no lingering embers behind
Speaker 2: the house that could reignite, and they discovered two separate
Speaker 2: cases of dynamite, one inside of a rusty metal container
Speaker 2: and the other hidden under a pile of hay. Frank
Speaker 2: said he had no idea how that got there, and
Speaker 2: it wasn't his, and he was very grateful that the
Speaker 2: firefighters found it before something terrible happened. The paper doesn't
Speaker 2: mention Frank's history with dynamite, but.
Speaker 1: Maybe they didn't know.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Remember, Frank Smith owns about six hundred acres of land
Speaker 2: in Ellsworth, Maine. He bought it back in the mid fifties,
Speaker 2: not long after he was accused of several bank robberies,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen seventy he signed over the deed to
Speaker 2: all of his property to a recent law school graduate
Speaker 2: in Rhode Island. He just gave this man hundreds of
Speaker 2: acres of land. Frank's sister, Florence, who had also purchased
Speaker 2: some land in Ellsworth, sold her property to the same
Speaker 2: man on the same day. Frank would later offer the
Speaker 2: vague explanation that the gift had been a sort of
Speaker 2: bond for work done that he couldn't repay. The man's
Speaker 2: name was Brian Soreau, at least I think it's Sorow.
Speaker 2: I could only find one recording of someone saying this
Speaker 2: man's name out loud, and that person said Sorrolt, which
Speaker 2: is what it looks like spelled out. But the man
Speaker 2: in the recording also said Pawtucket in the same sentence.
Speaker 2: And I've been informed by the Rhode Islanders and the
Speaker 2: audience that it's Patucket, So I'm not sure we can
Speaker 2: trust this In my quest for accurate pronunciation. I did
Speaker 2: watch a couple of old videos of hockey fights. There
Speaker 2: used to be a Canadian hockey player named Eve Sorow,
Speaker 2: and both the French and English language announcers pronounce it Sorow.
Speaker 2: The name does seem to be generally associated with people
Speaker 2: of French Canadian descent. I really do go out of
Speaker 2: my way to try to pronounce names of people and
Speaker 2: places correctly, but it's an uphill battle when the world
Speaker 2: is full of people and places who proudly wield their
Speaker 2: pronunciation of proper nouns as some kind of weapon in
Speaker 2: an assault against the very idea of phonics. Despite my
Speaker 2: extreme efforts to find recordings of locals saying these things,
Speaker 2: I don't think I'll ever escape the humbling experience of
Speaker 2: the regional shibbaleth. I mean, I'm from Virginia, home of Buna, Vista,
Speaker 2: buck Annen, Batatat, and Stanton. None of those are spelled
Speaker 2: how you think I grew up in Norfolk?
Speaker 1: I get it.
Speaker 2: If you say the R or the L, you're not
Speaker 2: from here. So I've chosen to go with Siro. I
Speaker 2: did my best.
Speaker 1: Now, if you're from.
Speaker 2: Rhode Island, you almost certainly know how that man's name
Speaker 2: is pronounced, because you probably know that Brian J. Sorow
Speaker 2: was elected mayor of Patucket, Rhode Island in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: and he was still the mayor when the FBI arrested
Speaker 2: him in nineteen ninety one for running a massive extortion,
Speaker 2: bribery and kickback operation out of city hall. But when
Speaker 2: Frank gave him all that land in nineteen seventy, he
Speaker 2: was fresh out of law school. He'd only passed the
Speaker 2: bar a few months earlier. Frank sort of implies that
Speaker 2: the land was payment for legal work, but it's hard
Speaker 2: to imagine what kind of work Sorow could have been
Speaker 2: doing for Frank that would have been worth six hundred
Speaker 2: acres of land in just a few months. As a
Speaker 2: recent law school graduate, he wasn't even licensed to practice
Speaker 2: in the state of Maine.
Speaker 1: Now, I don't want.
Speaker 2: To imply anything I can't prove. Brian Sorow may be disbarred,
Speaker 2: but he's still out there, so I'm not making any allegiance.
Speaker 2: But there are some clues here that Frank hadn't given
Speaker 2: up on the idea that the land could serve some
Speaker 2: criminal purpose. I couldn't find anything directly linking Brian Sorou
Speaker 2: to organize crime, at least not beyond his own racketeering case.
Speaker 2: No one's accusing Sourow of moving money around for the mafia.
Speaker 2: But I did find his father's name in Raymond Patriarch's
Speaker 2: FBI file, the same Raymond Patriarcha who ran the Providence mafia.
Speaker 2: The same Raymond Patriarca who maybe told an FBI informant
Speaker 2: to shoot Frank. In nineteen sixty one, an FBI agent
Speaker 2: wrote a memo about an unsuccessful attempt by their informant
Speaker 2: to get information about Patriarca out of one of his associates,
Speaker 2: a man named a May Sourou. Again, there's just no
Speaker 2: winning with French. I looked at a lot of videos
Speaker 2: of people saying this name. It's Aime, it could be
Speaker 2: m a, could be aim m Ama is what I
Speaker 2: saw most often. Don't email me about pronouncing quebequa French.
Speaker 2: A Ma Soro, Brian's father, and Brian's brother, Stephen Sorow,
Speaker 2: were involved in several massive and very confusing fraud schemes
Speaker 2: over the years. In nineteen seventy nine, A Ma Soro's
Speaker 2: name was on the incorporation paperwork for a company in
Speaker 2: Florida that was formed for the sole purpose of engaging
Speaker 2: in mortgage fraud. His name was actually on the incorporation
Speaker 2: paperwork for quite a few companies in the late seventies
Speaker 2: and early eighties, and most of those companies show up
Speaker 2: in federal court filings in cases for mail fraud, wire fraud,
Speaker 2: securities fraud, mortgage fraud, really any kind of financial crime
Speaker 2: you can think of, and some I hadn't heard of.
Speaker 2: Which is interesting because when Frank Smith did finally get
Speaker 2: around to forming his church in nineteen seventy eight, the
Speaker 2: paperwork filed with the state of Maine lists A May
Speaker 2: Sorrow as the vice president of the church and his son,
Speaker 2: Stephen Sorow was on the board of directors. Now, this
Speaker 2: doesn't fit neatly into my story, and it's not entirely
Speaker 2: about Frank, but it's too weird to leave out. When
Speaker 2: police in Florida showed up to ask questions about bad
Speaker 2: checks that were being deposited by that fake mortgage company
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty, they didn't find the Sirows. They did
Speaker 2: find a washed up minor league baseball player driving a
Speaker 2: car with a forged registration. Bob Banalowitz played a few
Speaker 2: seasons on farm teams for the Saint Louis Cardinals, but
Speaker 2: he never made it to the majors. His name pops
Speaker 2: up in connection with a couple of pretty serious crimes,
Speaker 2: but I can't actually find any indication he ever served
Speaker 2: time for any of them. But he was definitely arrested
Speaker 2: that day in nineteen eighty The article about this curious
Speaker 2: incident with the bad checks in Florida says police believed
Speaker 2: the mastermind behind the scheme was a known con man
Speaker 2: named Michael Arthur Strauss, but by the time the police
Speaker 2: got there, Strauss.
Speaker 1: Was in the wind.
Speaker 2: A year later, in nineteen eighty one, Banalowitz and Strauss
Speaker 2: were together again, and they were both on the run
Speaker 2: from charges related to a mail fraud scheme in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: I think you probably know by now, but part of
Speaker 2: my process means spending a lot of time flushing out
Speaker 2: the details of events I know full well are not
Speaker 2: going to be relevant and they are not getting me
Speaker 2: any closer to finishing the episode. I have reams of
Speaker 2: notes about stuff you'll never hear about because it just
Speaker 2: isn't related to the story. In any way, even by
Speaker 2: my standards, Bob Banalowitz, the minor league baseball player, is
Speaker 2: not a character in Frank's story. I mean, he did
Speaker 2: some fraud with the father of the man that Frank
Speaker 2: gave that land to, but there's no way they have
Speaker 2: any meaningful connection, right. There was no reason for me
Speaker 2: to look up the court records for a lawsuit and
Speaker 2: alla Witz filed against Wynn Dixie after he slipped and
Speaker 2: fell in a grocery store in Florida in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: But I've got it in my notes, you know, when
Speaker 2: I was poking around learning a little bit more about
Speaker 2: this very tang gentially relevant character, because you never know
Speaker 2: what you might find, and this time I'm glad I looked.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty one, when Manolowitz and Strauss are on
Speaker 2: the lamb after their scheme with this Arose went busted,
Speaker 2: they hid out at a friend's house in Massachusetts, and
Speaker 2: the newspaper later reported that the FBI arrested a man
Speaker 2: named Theodor Green for harboring the fugitives. And that name
Speaker 2: looked really familiar, And it turned out I had it
Speaker 2: in my notes already, But surely it's not the same
Speaker 2: Teddy Green. I'm sure there are plenty of Teddy Greens
Speaker 2: living in the Boston suburbs.
Speaker 1: But what a strange coincidence.
Speaker 2: I know, you know that at this point I forged
Speaker 2: ahead on my mission to waste my own time, and
Speaker 2: sure enough it wasn't a coincidence. The ages matched up,
Speaker 2: which was a good clue. But I think what really
Speaker 2: sealed it for me were the descriptions of Theodore Green
Speaker 2: in those articles written in the nineteen eighties. I mean,
Speaker 2: how many Teddy Greens in Boston could there be who
Speaker 2: had a history of bank robbery and once escaped from
Speaker 2: a Massachusetts state prison by shipping himself out in a
Speaker 2: crate of dirty rags. There's just no way. The Boston
Speaker 2: suburbs are home to two men named Theodore Green, who
Speaker 2: famously tried and failed to escape from Alcatraz on a
Speaker 2: dozen separate occasions.
Speaker 1: It's the same guy.
Speaker 2: The man who is harboring those fugitives in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: one is the exact same Teddy Green who was accused
Speaker 2: of robbing a bank with Frank Smith in Menford, Massachusetts
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty two. They were members of the same
Speaker 2: bank robbery gang. All throughout the early fifties, So what
Speaker 2: is Teddy doing back in the story thirty years later.
Speaker 2: It's an accumulation of hints that proves nothing I know,
Speaker 2: but it suggests that Frank never lost touch with his
Speaker 2: old associates even as his interests shifted and his public
Speaker 2: presentation evolved. He may have put on a clerical caller,
Speaker 2: but he's still doing business with the same people. When
Speaker 2: Brian Sirow was indicted in nineteen ninety one, his finances
Speaker 2: were obviously of great interest to investigators. He was accused
Speaker 2: of raking in about a million dollars in bribes and
Speaker 2: kickbacks over just a few short years. They made the
Speaker 2: arrest after they got him on a wire tap accepting
Speaker 2: a bribe, but that wasn't enough. They wanted the whole picture,
Speaker 2: and the whole picture included Frank and Claudia Smith. A
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two article in the Providence Journal says prosecute
Speaker 2: weren't actually sure where all the money went. Sorow definitely
Speaker 2: pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it didn't look
Speaker 2: like he was spending it. He didn't live a lavish lifestyle.
Speaker 2: He didn't drive a flashy car, or live in a mansion.
Speaker 1: His home was.
Speaker 2: Described as heavily mortgaged, and the missing money wasn't in
Speaker 2: his bank account. Bryan Sirou ended up pleading guilty, so
Speaker 2: there was no trial, and any court filings that might
Speaker 2: exist in that file are in a box on a
Speaker 2: shelf at the National Archives, so there's no chance of
Speaker 2: getting my hands on them anytime soon. All I really
Speaker 2: have to go on here is what the federal prosecutor
Speaker 2: told this reporter in nineteen ninety two. A lot of
Speaker 2: that missing money went directly into a bank account opened
Speaker 2: by Claudia Smith. Soroa was listed as a trustee on
Speaker 2: the account, and he was observed making cash withdrawals from
Speaker 2: it a few weeks.
Speaker 1: After he was arrested.
Speaker 2: Frank Smith never really held a straight job, at least
Speaker 2: not after the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: I can't find any evidence.
Speaker 2: That Claudia worked either, but they always had money. Claudia
Speaker 2: told people they didn't need to work because she had
Speaker 2: family money, some kind of large inheritance from oil wells
Speaker 2: on land her family owned. I'm not entirely sure that's true.
Speaker 2: Her family does not appear to have been wealthy, although
Speaker 2: I did find a notice in a newspaper in Alabama
Speaker 2: from nineteen fifty about a pending claim in court. It
Speaker 2: looks like Claudia and her sister shared a one sixty
Speaker 2: fourth interest in a parcel of land in Chalktawk County,
Speaker 2: and one of the other interested holders of that land
Speaker 2: was the Magnolia Petroleum Come. So there may have been
Speaker 2: oil and gas on that land, but I don't think
Speaker 2: it was the kind of oil money that funds you
Speaker 2: for life. But for decades, Claudia Smith and Brian Sorow
Speaker 2: were sharing access to several bank accounts. In nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: when Soirow needed money for a condo development project he
Speaker 2: was working on, he took out a loan from the trust.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty six, Sorow's law partner and personal attorney,
Speaker 2: Charles Rogers, borrowed twenty five thousand dollars from an account
Speaker 2: held by Frank Smith's church. There's no evidence either of
Speaker 2: these loans were repaid. Disclosures filed with the State Ethics
Speaker 2: Committee show Sirow borrowed undisclosed sums from the Smiths in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine and nineteen ninety. He refused to comment
Speaker 2: on how much money he borrowed, what it was for,
Speaker 2: and when or if it was repaid. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of unanswered questions about this money, but it does
Speaker 2: start to paint a picture that Frank really was using
Speaker 2: that land exactly how he'd imagined when he proposed the
Speaker 2: idea to George Lincoln Rockwell, make a fake church and
Speaker 2: use it to move dirty money around. Like I said,
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone is outright saying Brian Sirou was
Speaker 2: involved with organized crime, but Frank never really left that world.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety two, Frank's church owned three cars, and
Speaker 2: for some reason, he registered them in Rhode Island, not Maine.
Speaker 2: The cars were registered to an address in Patucket, specifically
Speaker 2: to a trailer park owned by lifelong patriarcha crime family associate,
Speaker 2: albo Vitally. According to Claudia Smith's driver's license, that's where
Speaker 2: she lived. Whether she did live there at some point
Speaker 2: or not isn't actually clear. The FBI couldn't find her
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety two. Frank said she wasn't living with
Speaker 2: him anymore and wouldn't say where she might be. She
Speaker 2: did get two traffic tickets near Frank's home in Ellsworth
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety four, and the citations indicate her license
Speaker 2: listed a Patucket address. When she died in two thousand,
Speaker 2: she was living in Massachusetts, and I can't find any
Speaker 2: record that the couple ever filed for divorce, and the
Speaker 2: paperwork for Frank's church was never updated after it was
Speaker 2: filed in nineteen seventy eight. So even though she's been
Speaker 2: dead for twenty five years, Claudia Smith is still the
Speaker 2: registered agent for the Church of Christ and Israel. But
Speaker 2: back in nineteen ninety two, the US Attorney's Office and
Speaker 2: the FBI couldn't locate Claudia, but they did subpoena Frank
Speaker 2: to testify before a grand jury. This wasn't the grand
Speaker 2: jury that indicted Siro It was one that came a
Speaker 2: few months after his arrest when they were looking into
Speaker 2: bringing additional charges against other people related to the corruption
Speaker 2: in Patucket. Grand jury testimony is secret, of course, so
Speaker 2: who knows? But Frank said on the stand and there
Speaker 2: Sirro's lawyer refused to comment on it, and so did
Speaker 2: the federal prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Not a word.
Speaker 2: The Providence Journal reported that one unnamed source said Frank
Speaker 2: showed up to court and a clerical caller. I guess
Speaker 2: to try to sell the idea that he was just
Speaker 2: a mild mannered Christian pastor whose attorney managed his money
Speaker 2: in a completely normal and legal way. It does kind
Speaker 2: of remind me, though, if you remember a few weeks
Speaker 2: ago in nineteen fifty, Frank and his little brother William
Speaker 2: were both arrested in connection with that bank robbery in Medford.
Speaker 2: And when they raided his little brother's apartment, they found
Speaker 2: a bunch of guns and amo and lock picks and dynamite.
Speaker 2: But they also found a suitcase full of disguises, including
Speaker 2: a clerical coller investments. So forty years apart, he's got
Speaker 2: a real church now kind of, but the clerical caller
Speaker 2: is still just a disguise. Brian Siro eventually pleaded guilty
Speaker 2: and spent five years in prison. There's no other reporting
Speaker 2: I can find on where all that bribe money ended up,
Speaker 2: whatever came of the subpoenas for Claudia Smith's bank accounts.
Speaker 2: But let's get back to Frank and his church. The
Speaker 2: Siro's showing up on that paperwork and in Frank's bank
Speaker 2: accounts is a hint that the church is less of
Speaker 2: a religious institution and more of a front for some
Speaker 2: kind of financial sin inigans. So the church is maybe
Speaker 2: not one hundred percent sincere, but what kind of church
Speaker 2: is he claiming to lead? In January of nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 2: Frank Smith filed paperwork with a State of Paine for
Speaker 2: an organization called the Church of Christ in Israel, just
Speaker 2: a few weeks after the church legally existed on paper.
Speaker 2: Brian Sirow gave all of the land back to Frank,
Speaker 2: not to him personally. He gave it to the church,
Speaker 2: and the church was initially granted tax exempt status, but
Speaker 2: the main state Bureau of Taxation rescinded that exemption in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine, and that's when Frank went to the press.
Speaker 2: He claimed to have been ordained four years earlier, so
Speaker 2: that would be nineteen seventy five, although when he was
Speaker 2: asked the same question in nineteen eighty two he said
Speaker 2: he'd been ordained for five years, which would mean he
Speaker 2: was ordained in seventy seven, and I think the later
Speaker 2: date is the correct one. He probably fudged it the
Speaker 2: first time to make it sound like he'd been a
Speaker 2: minister for more than a few months before he incorporated
Speaker 2: his church. The article in nineteen eighty two quotes Frank
Speaker 2: saying that he was ordained into the Christian identity movement
Speaker 2: by a man named Glenn Wheeler in California.
Speaker 1: That name meant nothing to me.
Speaker 2: I never say that. I always know the guy. But
Speaker 2: who's Glenn Wheeler? I mean, with Frank's connections to the
Speaker 2: American Nazi Party and by extension, the broader movement, I
Speaker 2: kind of figured he would have been brought into Christian
Speaker 2: identity by a bigger name, you know, a James Wickstrom
Speaker 2: or a William Potter, Gale, Dan Gaman. Maybe not Glenn,
Speaker 2: just some guy named Glenn. But I guess that's kind
Speaker 2: of the thing about Christian identity. It's not a church,
Speaker 2: it's an idea. Anyone can just start writing a newsletter
Speaker 2: full of bizarre, racist, biblical hermeneutics. Anyone can just mail
Speaker 2: certificates out saying I'm a minister and now you are too.
Speaker 2: Sometimes a Christian identity group might have a church in
Speaker 2: the traditional sense, you know, a building and a congregation,
Speaker 2: something like Dan Gayman's Church of Israel and Missouri. Other
Speaker 2: times it might look like a church at the center
Speaker 2: of an entire compound, like Robert Miller's Aloheim City in
Speaker 2: Oklahoma or Richard Butler's Area Nations in Idaho. Sometimes a
Speaker 2: Christian identity group is less of a congregation and more
Speaker 2: of a terror cell groups like the Aryan Republican Army,
Speaker 2: the Order, or the Covenant the Sword in the arm
Speaker 2: of the Lord. But it seems like the most common
Speaker 2: kind of Christian identity minister is a guy whose church
Speaker 2: exists only in his newsletter. The Laporte Church of Christ
Speaker 2: never had more than a few dozen members, but Pete
Speaker 2: Peters had a radio show, a monthly newsletter, a television
Speaker 2: program in thousands of fans all over the country. Kingdom
Speaker 2: Identity Ministries didn't have a church at all, but they
Speaker 2: sold books and tapes, and they broadcast their sermons twenty
Speaker 2: four to seven over shortwave radio. Sheldon Emery's Lord's Covenant
Speaker 2: Church was so small they met in his living room,
Speaker 2: but through his America's Promise Ministries, he bought airtime on
Speaker 2: stations all over the country to broadcast his message. You know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like what Brian Eno said about the
Speaker 2: Velvet Underground. They may not have sold a lot of albums,
Speaker 2: but everybody who bought one went out and started their
Speaker 2: own band. These physical congregations were small, but a lot
Speaker 2: of the people who got the message would go on
Speaker 2: to have an outsized impact, and you can usually trace
Speaker 2: their ideological lineage to a specific organization. Three men associated
Speaker 2: with America's Promised Ministries bombed an abortion clinic and a
Speaker 2: newspaper in nineteen ninety six. Another member of that congregation
Speaker 2: shot five people in a Jewish community center in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles in nineteen ninety nine. When Eric Rudolph attended Dan
Speaker 2: Gayman's Church of Israel and Missouri in the eighties, Gaiman
Speaker 2: tried to play matchmaker with his own daughter. He wanted
Speaker 2: to make Eric Rudolph his son in law and perhaps
Speaker 2: his successor. A decade later, Rudolph set off a bomb
Speaker 2: at the Atlanta Olympics before bombing two abortion clinics and
Speaker 2: a lesbian bar. Members of the Order murdered Alan Berg,
Speaker 2: a Jewish talk radio host, because he was disrespectful in
Speaker 2: an on air debate with Christian identity minister Pete Peters.
Speaker 2: A man named Michael Ryan was so inspired by the
Speaker 2: sermons of James Wickstrom that he started a small cult
Speaker 2: compound and eventually brutally murdered two of his own followers
Speaker 2: when they expressed doubt about Christian identity teachings. So I
Speaker 2: think there is value in finding out who Glenn Wheeler was,
Speaker 2: who was it that ordained Frank, and what version of
Speaker 2: Christian identity was Frank Steepton, Because there is a wide
Speaker 2: spectrum everything from guys who've never actually opened a Bible
Speaker 2: but are likely to nod in agreement if you tell
Speaker 2: them it says black people aren't human, Guys like George
Speaker 2: Lincoln Rockwell who don't actually care at all what's in
Speaker 2: the Bible, but they have a cynical understanding of the
Speaker 2: political value of tricking that first kind of guy into
Speaker 2: being more racist. And then there are guys who truly
Speaker 2: believe that God commands them to incite a bloody race
Speaker 2: war because of a genuinely held belief in a warped
Speaker 2: understanding of pre millennialist eschatology. And then there's kinds of
Speaker 2: guys you and I have never even imagined, and all
Speaker 2: kinds of guys in between. Sometimes it really is just
Speaker 2: a tax dodge, but sometimes it is a terrorist plot
Speaker 2: aimed at triggering armageddon. So that's why I usually just
Speaker 2: give you the short version. It is a racist misunderstanding
Speaker 2: of the Book of Genesis. There's a lot going on here.
Speaker 2: The man who actually ordained Frank into the Christian Identity
Speaker 2: ministry is pretty obscure. Admittedly, I could keep digging. I
Speaker 2: could try begging the Special Collections Library and at the
Speaker 2: University of Kansas to scam the papers in a box
Speaker 2: labeled Glen Wheeler nineteen seventy seven to nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 2: in their collection of James Mason's personal papers. You can
Speaker 2: only access that collection in person due to the discovery
Speaker 2: of some child pornography in the materials Mason donated to
Speaker 2: the library.
Speaker 1: I've heard you have.
Speaker 2: To request the boxes in advance so they can be
Speaker 2: pre screened. I will make it out to Kansas one day,
Speaker 2: but for now I do know what at least one
Speaker 2: of those documents is Glenn Wheeler ordained at least one
Speaker 2: other person besides Frank Smith in nineteen seventy seven, it
Speaker 2: was James Mason, the author of the Adam Waffen Bible Siege.
Speaker 2: While Mason was in prison in the nineties after an
Speaker 2: arrest for sexual exploitation of a minor, he wrote a
Speaker 2: collection of essays on the Bible. In that book, called
Speaker 2: One Verse Charlie's, he includes a scan of the certificate
Speaker 2: Glenn Wheeler mailed him in nineteen seventy seven ordaining him
Speaker 2: as a minister in Christ's Identity Church. I did find
Speaker 2: a little bit more about Glen Wheeler, but nothing about
Speaker 2: his church. None of what I found about Glen Wheeler
Speaker 2: had anything to do with Christian Identity. He ran for
Speaker 2: California State Assembly in nineteen seventy on the American Independent
Speaker 2: Party ticket. The party formed so that George Wallace could
Speaker 2: run for president on the segregation platform, and he actually
Speaker 2: met with George Wallace at some point in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: and earlier in the sixties he formed some kind of
Speaker 2: racist discussion group called Western Front with a man whose
Speaker 2: real name is Walter White, but I think that's for
Speaker 2: another day. Walter White had a very interesting wife. But
Speaker 2: as far as Frank goes, I'm not sure he had
Speaker 2: much contact with Glenn after the ordination, but he was
Speaker 2: in touch with other people in the movement. When Frank
Speaker 2: was explaining his beliefs to a reporter in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: he mentioned a few guys by name, he talked about
Speaker 2: Dan Gaman and Sheldon Emory, and when he was back
Speaker 2: in the newspaper again in nineteen eighty two, complaining about
Speaker 2: his ongoing battle for tax exemption, he told a reporter
Speaker 2: that Sheldon Emory had offered to connect him with a
Speaker 2: group called the Christian Law Association for some assistance, and
Speaker 2: he also mentioned a recent conference in Wisconsin. Based on
Speaker 2: the location and the timing, that has to be James Wickstrom.
Speaker 2: Frank clearly had a soft spot for Sheldon Emory. He
Speaker 2: dropped that name twice in interviews about his church, and
Speaker 2: his name shows up in at least one of Emory's
Speaker 2: newsletters as a supporter. In nineteen eighty hosted an event
Speaker 2: in Sandford, Maine. It was advertised in the newspaper as
Speaker 2: a benign sounding inter faith Easter program featuring gospel music
Speaker 2: and the presentation of a film.
Speaker 1: The film was called Airs of the Promise. It's a
Speaker 1: very generic sort of phrase, and.
Speaker 2: It's a phrase that appears in mostly innocuous religious writing
Speaker 2: that doesn't have a Christian identity angle. The phrase itself
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily mean we're in Christian identity territory, so it
Speaker 2: made it a little hard to search for, but this
Speaker 2: videotape is actually something pretty specific, and Frank seemed to
Speaker 2: really like this tape. Not only did he show it
Speaker 2: at the Interfaith Easter program in nineteen eighty, in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one, after he testified before that Grand jury in
Speaker 2: Rhode Island, he mailed a copy of this video to
Speaker 2: the federal prosecutor.
Speaker 4: Why of all the people of the earth, has it
Speaker 4: been only this white Caucasian race, these so called gentiles,
Speaker 4: who have claimed Jesus Christ as their God, and who
Speaker 4: have taken this book as the foundation of their religion.
Speaker 4: The answer, the truth, which is avoided and even denied
Speaker 4: by the clergy, is simple. These people are the Israelites,
Speaker 4: the children of Abraham, God's chosen people.
Speaker 2: I did watch airs of the Promise. It's only about
Speaker 2: forty minutes long, and it was a waste of my time.
Speaker 2: But the voice you just heard is Pastor Sheldon Emory
Speaker 2: of America's Promised Ministries, a Christian identity minister in Arizona.
Speaker 2: So we know Frank was a big fan of Emory
Speaker 2: and they were in touch at least a little bit.
Speaker 2: There is a scan of an undated pamphlet published by
Speaker 2: Emory's ministry. There was archived in the Gordon Hall and
Speaker 2: Grace Collection of Dissenting an extremist printed Propaganda, that's say
Speaker 2: special collection of materials held at the Brown University Library.
Speaker 2: And this old pamphlet from Emory's ministry has a stamp
Speaker 2: on it showing that it was mailed to the Church
Speaker 2: of Christ and Israel. Now that's the name of Frank's church,
Speaker 2: but the address isn't right. Frank's church was in Ellsworth, Maine,
Speaker 2: and this stamp says Dover, New Hampshire. It turns out
Speaker 2: that when Frank told reporters that he had started churches
Speaker 2: in other New England towns that he traveled around check
Speaker 2: in on from time to time, he wasn't totally lying.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know that any of these churches
Speaker 2: had members, but there was at least a guy in
Speaker 2: New Hampshire. The church in Dover was headed by a
Speaker 2: man named Alan Goodrich, who was incidentally one of the
Speaker 2: other hosts at Frank's interfaith Easter program. There isn't much
Speaker 2: surviving evidence that I can find about Frank's church directly.
Speaker 2: He doesn't appear to have published a newsletter, at least
Speaker 2: not one that was archived online or written about in
Speaker 2: a newspaper, at least not that I could find. And
Speaker 2: there are factors complicating the search. Churches that share the
Speaker 2: same name might be chapters of the same organization. They
Speaker 2: might be inspired by one another, or totally unrelated and
Speaker 2: just inspired by the same source material. Sometimes the same
Speaker 2: organization has several names over time or even at the
Speaker 2: same time. A lot of Christian identity organizations have names
Speaker 2: that look like they were assembled by drawing a few
Speaker 2: words out of a hat. And there's only so many
Speaker 2: words in the lexicon here. It's just a sort of
Speaker 2: random hodgepodge of the words Christ, Jesus, Israel, Identity, Kingdom, ministry, America.
Speaker 2: So you do sometimes end up with organizations that have
Speaker 2: the same name that don't have anything to do with
Speaker 2: each other. But there aren't very many references to something
Speaker 2: specifically called the Church of Christ in Israel. Now, there
Speaker 2: is a Christian denomination called the Church of Christ, and
Speaker 2: I think it does have a church in Israel that
Speaker 2: is a completely different thing. But within the Christian identity movement,
Speaker 2: there are only a few references to something called the
Speaker 2: Church of Christ.
Speaker 1: In Israel.
Speaker 2: And I know Alan Goodrich's church in New Hampshire is
Speaker 2: connected to Franks because Goodrich wrote a letter to Grace
Speaker 2: Hoague in nineteen eighty one that was preserved in the
Speaker 2: Hull Hoague collection. But there were at least two other
Speaker 2: people using the name the Church of Christ in Israel,
Speaker 2: and both of them pop up in the nineties. There
Speaker 2: was a chiropractor and Sei California, who wrote prolifically in
Speaker 2: a very unhinged newsletter, but he doesn't seem to have
Speaker 2: done much else. And then there was a group and
Speaker 2: a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: The Church of Christ in Israel in Pennsylvania was run
Speaker 2: by a man named August Christ at the direction of
Speaker 2: James Wickstrom. So there is a chance that the shared
Speaker 2: name here indicates some relationship, because I believe Frank was
Speaker 2: in touch with Wickstrom, but I just can't find the
Speaker 2: connective tissue to prove this. It would be just like
Speaker 2: Frank to have known August Christ, though I mean, Frank
Speaker 2: knew all kinds of strange characters. Frank was getting into
Speaker 2: hijinks you just wouldn't even believe, So it would make
Speaker 2: perfect sense if he knew a man like August Christ,
Speaker 2: he might have lived a life stranger than Frank's. He
Speaker 2: served nine months in the Navy during the Vietnam but
Speaker 2: he was discharged for being unfit to serve. He was
Speaker 2: a clansman. When the Aryan Nations splintered after Richard Butler's death,
Speaker 2: he led one of the factions, and he tried to
Speaker 2: form an alliance with Al Qaida. He had his own
Speaker 2: Christian Identity church. He was on two episodes of Jerry Springer,
Speaker 2: and before he went to prison for fraudulently obtaining veterans
Speaker 2: benefits and a truly horrific series of sex crimes against children.
Speaker 2: He lost both of his legs to diabetes. We will
Speaker 2: have to come back to August Christ, but.
Speaker 1: I think we're done with Frank.
Speaker 2: Though I'm not done with the stories going on all
Speaker 2: around him. But I haven't decided yet. If we're staying here,
Speaker 2: we're moving on for now. I did spend an awful
Speaker 2: lot of time this week reading some shockingly racist interpretations
Speaker 2: of the Bible based on a misunderstanding of ancient Greek,
Speaker 2: so I think I will have to tell you a
Speaker 2: little bit more about the man Frank Smith ordained in
Speaker 2: two thousand. I mean, if we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: guys who believe Eve had sex with a snake in
Speaker 2: the garden of Eden, there's just no avoiding Bill Fink's
Speaker 2: weird blog.
Speaker 1: But Frank's pardon, the story is over.
Speaker 2: Francis Joseph Smith, the Second, the man George Lincoln Rockwell
Speaker 2: called the Holy Father, the man the FBI called Boston Blackie,
Speaker 2: a bank robber, bomber, loan shark, Nazi, and Christian identity minister.
Speaker 2: Died on October second, twenty twenty, just shy of his
Speaker 2: one hundredth birthday. He signed a will a year before
Speaker 2: he died, and in it he left what little he
Speaker 2: had to his daughter. He scratched out his initials at
Speaker 2: the bottom of a page whose final line reads, I
Speaker 2: have not left my son anything, and this was a
Speaker 2: deliberate choice. Frank's actual parting gift to his son was
Speaker 2: leaving his mailing address on file with the city as
Speaker 2: the point of contact for the church. The church still
Speaker 2: owns all that land, and as of this recording, the
Speaker 2: city of Ellsworth, Maine, is still sending Frank's son past
Speaker 2: due notices or a growing real estate tax Bill. He
Speaker 2: never did convince the State of Maine that it was
Speaker 2: a real church. Weird Little Guys as a production of
Speaker 2: Coal Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written and recorded
Speaker 2: by me, Willy Hunger. You probably noticed that I have
Speaker 2: a cold this week, so I'm sorry my voice sounds
Speaker 2: a little nasily. Our executive producers are Sophie Lettterman and
Speaker 2: Robert Evans. The show is edited by the wildly talented
Speaker 2: Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert.
Speaker 2: You can email me at Riddle the Guy's pot Guess
Speaker 2: at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it, but
Speaker 2: I probably won't answer. It's nothing personal. You can exchange
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners on the
Speaker 2: Weird Little Guys subreddit, and if you're listening to this
Speaker 2: around the time it came out, you can go over
Speaker 2: to the subreddit and post in the pin thread if
Speaker 2: you have questions you'd like answered in an upcoming Q
Speaker 2: and A episode. I think we'll be doing that sometime
Speaker 2: in December. As always, don't post anything that's going to
Speaker 2: make you on my Weird Little Guys